Each year, about 1,500 children in the United States are rushed to hospital emergency rooms with accidental gunshot injuries. Nearly 200 children died from such wounds in 1994. Surprisingly, experts continue to suggest that handgun owners should not use trigger locks on handguns they keep loaded for protection.
In an effort to provide a handgun owner with quick access to a handgun, yet prevent others from gaining such access, handgun safes have been proposed. These safes generally include small receptacles for receiving one or more handguns. Because of their size, handgun safes are easily carried off by children, thieves and others unless such are mounted upon immovable objects.
The known mounting mechanisms for handgun safes are complex in construction and cumbersome to use. One particular shortcoming with these mechanisms is that they do not provide a user with the ability to position the safe in a standard orientation when it is alternatively mounted from above or below as would be the case if, for example, the safe was temporarily transferred from the underside of a bed frame to the floorboard of an automobile. Failure to maintain a single orientation for the safe makes manipulation of the safe's lock difficult in emergency situations when examining it may not be possible.